In The Pursuit of Public Journalism you argue that citizen media as currently configured are not contributing much to creating that “conversational commons.” But COULD they? What would have to happen for venues such as blogs and hyperlocal sites to meet traditional public journalism goals such as fostering effective deliberation and problem-solving of public issues?
It is true that citizen media, notably hyper-local sites, do not at present contribute much to a “conversational commons.” The most serious impediment, as I note above, is the prevailing journalistic division of labor whereby journalists take on responsibility for reporting on properly public, political issues while encouraging citizens to report on private, personal concerns. This is a relatively easy problem to rectify, however. Instead of operating their sites in terms of this journalistic division of labor, journalists could simply dispense with this distinction and encourage citizens to contribute reporting and commentary on all public issues of concern to them. As to the question of what would need to happen to blogs to meet traditional public journalism goals of fostering effective public deliberation and problem-solving, I believe the main challenges are to gain much more independence of mainstream news media and engage in genuine deliberation across ideological divides. As I detail in my book, the empirical research literature clearly shows that blogs tend to mimic the news reporting and commentary of mainstream news media sites and primarily inspire deliberation among people of similar political persuasions.
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